Interesting Six Flags Presentation

I thought this was interesting check out the Slide presentation:

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/701374/000091412107000782/0000914121-07-000782-index.htm

I'm sorry, but THAT is the best they can do for a corporate presentation to the SEC? Entirely too much text on a couple of those slides, and the slide with all the corporate and new ride logos and the slide with the sold parks logos looked AWFUL. Talk about a piss-poor graphic design ...

But other than that, decent corporate information, they seem to think all is going well, but at the same time, acknowledging there are problems. Seems like they're heading the wrong way.

I'm not for six flags bashing, but Impulse-ive is 100% right. That looks like a powerpoint presentation put together for a 10th grade report. The way the logos were pasted all over the place and the amount of text, it was a headache trying to get through them.

I think my favorite part of the slide is the mention of better food quality and the enforcement of park rules and dress codes. A lot of the behavior by six flags park goers is not family friendly. *** Edited 4/2/2007 5:10:19 PM UTC by SFGAMDie HARD***

Agreed, the content is good, but the style... meh. Is it just me, or is Arial an ugly font?

It wasn't a presentation to the SEC. It was for a Lehman Brothers conference last week (and then filed with the SEC).

Trust me, as far as power point slides at these presentations this one isn't too shabby.

Anyone else intrigued by the reference to Great Adventure as New York? Obviously the company is trying to position the parks near major metropolitan markets (and GA does draw from Philly and NYC of course).

You know, it's always possible to make statistics 'imply' something that may or may not be true. According to the presentation 'guest satisfaction scored at an all time high'.

Well, to the un-educated on the matter, you might think 'hey, that's great'...to us in the enthusiast world, I'm thinking 'hey, they scored 1, up from 0!'.

OK, this isn't meant to be a SF bashing, and I agree that things are improving in the parks and I wish them continued success, I am just pointing out a matter of semantics.

From the presentation:

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o Strategic shift to stretch the brand towards families is working

- Strong growth in per cap spending at our parks suggests that our guests are willing to pay more for a better experience

- Importantly, guest satisfaction surveys show that guests were more satisfied with their experience, even while spending more

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That's the way I see it too. :)

Arial is considered a standard font, therefore, that's why you see it so often. It's also easy to read in many sizes.

I don't think the master slide-design is bad in itself. It's got a high amount of contrast between the text and the graphics which is good.

I do agree that some of the slides have too many logos on them, but I don't find them distracting, which is important. If they were larger and also in the backgrounds, that could cause readability issues.

It's hard to say without throwing up the slides on a big screen (like we have at work) if there's too much information on some of the slides (my gut says yes). I'll see if I can check it out on Wednesday (my next day at work).

What I can't deterimine if this will ever be shown on a screen, but if so, there are formulas for determining how high your text must be to be read from the back of a room. In our main auditorium, it's 16-inches high.

You guys criticize the most ridiculous things. Any presentation that is going to be distributed electronically has to have some degree of solid content in it.

It's not intended to be in a freakin' art gallery.

No, it's not an art gallery, but a major corporation should produce something that looks professional. This looks like it was made in MSPaint.

If you have the time and would like to know whats in store for 07& 08 in all SFs park you can listen to this conference call. It is about 80mins long and gives alot of information. Click on the 12/12/06 Update call;

http://investors.sixflags.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=61629&p=irol-presentations *** Edited 4/2/2007 2:39:01 PM UTC by Ajrides***

Two things I found interesting/relevant/noteworthy.

First: "51% of our guests are parents with two or more children". I'm no statistician, but that means either a) those *extra* kids are being left home so they don't throw off the parent/kid ratio, or more likely, b) the kids are being counted as PART of that 51%. Just thought it was funny... ;)

Second: More seriously, I gues we can understand the Houston scenario much better. At 15x EBITDA, they did a WHOLE lot better selling the AW property than the did for the ones sold to PARC (10x EBITDA). There was little to NO chance the park could've turned around to make the kind of profit necessary to remain as a park, when developers were willing to pay THAT kind of money for it. VERY unlikely to get the kind of annual growth needed to cover 15x earnings from a *developed* business like that...*after* the taxes, depreciation, amortization, you'd have to grow the place at over 10%/year.

The presentation is awfully heavy.

The slide content is OK, but if I were doing the same presentation, I would have used about 30 slides instead of 14. I didn't read the supporting material, but my guess is that most of the information for the presentation was included in the slide show. The slides are OK as hand-out material (apart from a couple of the transition slides which don't belong in a hand-out) but as presentation materials there is too much stuff on the screen. Better to split many of those slides into multiple slides. As a general rule, take the slides that have sub-bullets on them and make it one slide for each main bullet point.

Aside from readability, the other thing people don't consider about putting up more slides with less stuff on the slides is that with more slides, the slides change more frequently, making for a more visually interesting presentation.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

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rollergator said:
First: "51% of our guests are parents with two or more children". I'm no statistician, but that means either a) those *extra* kids are being left home so they don't throw off the parent/kid ratio, or more likely, b) the kids are being counted as PART of that 51%. Just thought it was funny... ;)

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It's those new three parent families that have been popping up everywhere. ;)

Seriously, I think it's just worded poorly and it's like you said - the kids are counted in that.

"51% of our guests are parents and their two or more children."

In plain english - Half the people who visit our parks visit as a family unit with two or more children. :)

"Guests are willing to pay more for a better experience."

Yes and water's wet and the sky is blue. Don't make it sound like you discovered something that nobody else has a freakin' clue about.

The last regime didn't have a clue, and they were the one's in charge.

The last regime didn't know that a better experience was even POSSIBLE.

"We built *another* $25M coaster, what more can we DO for you ungrateful people!"... ;)